


Warmth

by Keiko Kirin (sakana17)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-06-26
Updated: 2001-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 18:29:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakana17/pseuds/Keiko%20Kirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into Daniel's past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warmth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sandy H., who wanted stories about Daniel whoring his way through college.

_Chicago, winter 1985_

=Knock, knock=

"Hello."

"Hey there. Everett's on his way. Hey, Rayner. Is that your Subaru parked outside? The alarm's going off."

Stephen scrambles to go check on his new car. Peter smirks. What an asshole.

Georgia comes out of the bathroom.

"Peter."

"George."

A blowtorch couldn't melt the ice between them.

"So, let's get started," I say.

"Isn't Sarah coming?" Sounds like a plea. Georgia must want female solidarity. I'm not going to admit I shied up when I tried to ask her, so I just reply, "No."

Stephen comes back. Glares at Peter. Sits next to Georgia.

"Are we ready yet?" I open Riemschneider's _Lehrbuch des Akkadischen_.

=Knock, knock=

"Hello."

"Hey. Hi, George. Stephen. Hey, Peter. Look what I brought." Tim tosses a baggie at Peter.

"Everett, my man! Just what the doctor ordered."

Georgia slides over to sit closer to Peter. "Ganga?"

Peter's already rolling one. I drum my fingers on my book and look at Stephen, who rolls his eyes.

All right. Let them fail.

\----

Later:

"So, Jackson. What's with the heat?"

"There isn't any."

"So I noticed. What's up with that?"

Georgia giggles and snuggles closer to Peter. They hated each other an hour ago.

"Gas company cut it off."

"Dude." Tim always talks like that; it's not the pot. "That sucks."

Stephen gives me a dirty look. "Why don't you just ask for an advance on your stipend?"

Oh, here we go. Stephen's driving a new Subaru, but he's still pissed because I got the full scholarship and the teaching stipend. It's not the money, it's the honor.

"They don't give advances."

"So you're out in the cold until next term?" Georgia slides across the floor and rests her chin on my knee. Wide-eyed sympathetic stare. Looks like she's about to offer to keep me warm for the winter, and that's not a bad prospect. Except Peter's suddenly clutching that roach like he wants to brand me with it.

"I guess I'll have to get another job." Sounds sensible. Let the topic drop, please, because I haven't thought this out yet. Don't know where I'm going to get the time to work. Can't stand the thought of most of the jobs out there.

"Dude. That sucks."

"What job?" Stephen is suspicious, like I'm about to steal his dream job from him or something.

I shrug. "I thought I'd look on campus first. I hear the library's always hiring."

"Dude. Not the library. The pay's shit."

Georgia rolls away. "Do you have any food?" Gets up and starts checking my cabinets.

Tim warms to his topic. "You know my friend Jake. He worked at the library one semester, and they had him, like, putting books away and shit. And then they go and check up on you, like it's such hard work. And the pay sucks. It's like minimum wage or some shit like that. He said the only good part was that he could take his girlfriend up in the stacks and not get caught."

Georgia, from the refrigerator: "Everyone does that. Is this leftover Chinese? White rice? You save the white rice?" She comes back in, eating cold white rice with her fingers. "You know, once, I was upstairs in the African section, and I went to the ladies' room, and, like, these two guys came out of there. Two guys. Weird. So I go inside, and there's a used condom on the floor. Ew. Like, God, if you're going to do that, could you please clean up your mess afterwards?"

Peter starts laughing. "Oh, yeah. That ladies' room is notorious."

Stephen looks like he's being contaminated by just talking about it. I ask, "It is? Why?"

Tim laughs, too. "Haven't you ever been on that floor? You know how dark it is. Have you been in the men's room there? That's, like, the cruising spot. I mean, you do not wanna go in there if you gotta do more than piss, you know what I mean? 'Cause the stalls -- the frat guys call them 'BeeJay Alley'."

Stephen stands up and puts his books away. "I think I'll go study at home." Is out the door in under a minute.

Peter calls after him, "If you're looking for some quick relief, head to BeeJay Alley." And giggles uncontrollably over the pun. Tim laughs so hard, he doubles over.

"But what about the ladies' room?" I ask.

"That's 'Lover's Lane'. For the real lovey-dovey stuff. Since the men's room is so busy." Tim makes an 'o' with his mouth and blows out smoke.

Peter giggles. "In and out, in and out."

Georgia coughs on some rice.

Peter stifles his giggles and looks at me through the smoky haze. "That's it," he says. "That's how you can pay your gas bill."

He's got that look. I know I'm not going to like his joke, but I'll play along. "How?"

He has a nasty smile sometimes. "Give head. You know, put out. For money."

Tim falls silent. He looks from Peter to me. He's expecting me to get mad. Georgia is too busy scraping the last of the rice out of the container.

I rest my elbow on my book and lean forward, pretending to think about this seriously. "Become a prostitute. I hadn't thought of that. Do you think it pays well?"

Tim relaxes and smiles. I'm going along with the joke. He nudges Georgia, to make sure she doesn't miss it.

Peter starts a new roach and shrugs. "I don't know. What's the going rate on blow jobs these days? Twenty bucks? Hey, Everett, you should know."

Tim shakes his head. "Not me, man. The expert on that just left." He nods at the closed door.

Peter passes the roach to Tim and grins. "Okay. Let's say twenty bucks. How much was your gas bill?"

"Seventy dollars."

"That's only four guys, and you get some left over."

"Wouldn't my pimp want a cut?"

Tim laughs. Peter says, "No, Jackson. You don't need a pimp. You strike out on your own. Set up shop in the library. Or, hell, here. You don't have a roommate."

"You guys. This isn't funny." Georgia pouts. Tim hands her the roach.

I look around my tiny, one-room apartment, and pretend to be imagining how to turn it into a hotel room with hourly rates. "Well, put it that way... I could use a steady supplemental income."

Peter grins at me. "That's the spirit. You know, Jackson, you could make a lotta money this way. Wear your glasses and a rugby shirt. Play up the innocent college guy act. Fags just love that."

"Peter." Georgia offers me the roach. I shake my head. She passes it back to Tim.

Peter ignores Georgia's warning tone. He slides closer to my chair. "But that's just the beginning, Jackson. You could make enough money to get a new place, buy a new car. You know." He leers at me, tilts his head like he's checking me out. "Ass like yours, you could get all the fags after you."

"Peter, shut up."

"Dude."

I stare at him, and smile. He's just as transparent as Stephen right now. Jealous of Georgia's earlier flirting with me. Jealous of my scholarship, my stipend, my grades, my papers. Resenting me because he needs my help to pass the Akkadian test. Probably resenting me because I know what I want to do with my life, and he doesn't.

"Maybe you should be my pimp," I say. "If I'm going to be such a cash cow. It was your idea, after all."

Peter's smile gets even nastier. "Hey, yeah. I like that idea. Because that makes you my bitch, Jackson." He sits up on his knees and gets into my face. "You want to be my bitch, Jackson?"

I blink at him. Don't waver. Ugly asshole.

Georgia pulls on his arm. Tim puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Dude. It's late. I gotta go. I'll give you guys a ride, okay?"

Peter blinks at me, and his smile fades. He looks at me and mutters under his breath, "You'd probably give it away for free, bitch." Tim and Georgia don't hear him; they're getting their bookbags and jackets. Only I hear him. Only I see the look of hatred on his face.

And then it's gone. He sits back and laughs. Stands up and puts his arm around Georgia, who doesn't pull away. They all walk out together, leaving my apartment hazy and smelling like pot. I open the window and let the freezing wind in, and clean white rice off the floor.

\----

A month later:

If I get this done tonight, I can take Sarah out tomorrow. That's my thought, the goal that gets me through the dull task of grading papers for Professor Avila.

I take off my glasses and rub my eyes. Yawn. Check my watch. God, it's dark in here. I'd go back home, except my apartment is an icebox right now. I've been sleeping in the all-night student lounge, or on Stephen's couch. Crashed on Tim's floor a couple of times, but with him and his girlfriend on the other side of the room, it was a little awkward.

I sit back and stretch. Look around at the rows of dusty, musty books. Georgia was right. No one comes up here.

Haven't seen Peter in a couple of weeks. He and Georgia failed the Akkadian test. They're dating again. He stopped coming to class. Georgia still shows up, tries as best she can. She'll get a C unless she screws up on her paper.

I need to stretch my legs. I stand up and leave my stuff in the study carrel. No one around to steal it. Walk down some aisles of books, running my fingers along the spines. I step out of one aisle and I'm facing the ladies' room. Georgia's story about the two guys and the used condom floats back to me. I'm bored, and curious, and I've never been inside a ladies' room before. I open the door, which creaks.

The fluorescent overhead buzzes and flickers. The walls are pink. How cliché. And it's huge. It has to be bigger than the men's room. Five stalls along one wall, and three sinks along the other, with a long mirror above them. It's cleaner, and doesn't have that urine stench to it.

The stalls are all empty. No used condoms on the floor. One faucet is dripping. I turn it tightly, but it stills drips. There's a tampon dispenser next to the door. Pretty much just public restroom. No big mystery.

I imagine some woman walking in and finding me in here, so I quickly step out, back among the dark rows of books. I wander down some more aisles. Check my carrel -- everything just as I left it.

I have to pee. I walk past the elevators and fire stairs to the men's room. As I push the door open, I remember the lore about this place, too. But I've been in here once before, and I never noticed anything.

It seems darker than the women's room, maybe because it's smaller, and the walls are institutional green. There's one guy at a urinal, sort of glances over when I walk in. Looks like one of the stalls is occupied, but I don't really pay much attention. I step up to a urinal and go about my business.

From behind me, from the stall, there's a sound. For a second, I tell myself I didn't hear it, but then there it is again. It's stifled moaning, and the pattern of it is unmistakably sexual. The lore is true? It seems so strange to me. I look back, over my shoulder, and I can see the soles of two shoes facing me under the stall door. Jeans bunched around the ankles of two more shoes positioned either side of the toilet. The lore is true.

As I'm turning away, to face the wall in front of me, my gaze is intersected by the other guy's. His look makes me pause. He looks curious, nervous. His gaze lowers, and I follow his line of sight and look down and realize he's checking me out. I finish, zip up, flush, and don't meet his eyes as I walk over to the sink and quickly wash my hands.

The moaning from the stall is louder. There's a breath on the back of my neck. I look up, and in the mirror is the other guy. Our eyes meet in the mirror. The faucet's still running and my hands are dripping into the sink.

He puts his hand on my ass. He swallows hard. He's nervous. He moves his hand, like he's rubbing me, keeps staring at me in the mirror. I'm not reacting, just staring back, and I'm not sure what's going on.

Peter's, "You'd probably give it away for free, bitch," drifts into my mind. My face burns, because I'm so angry at Peter for saying that, and I'm not even sure why. It was a joke about me whoring my way through college, but there's something else that's disturbing me, and I haven't thought about it or put a name to it yet.

The moaning is still loud. The faucet's still running. The guy swallows again. He squeezes my ass, but softly, shakily, uncertainly. I realize that he's probably been waiting for me to turn around to punch him. My face burns, because I can imagine turning around and going into a stall, and he would follow me, and...

And then what? Quick relief? Do I want him to suck me? This guy I don't even know? I don't want to suck him, I'm sure of that. I look at his eyes in the mirror. Desperate. He wants to suck me, he probably wants to do more than that. He would probably let me do anything I wanted. Desperate. Longing. I see it so clearly. It unnerves me.

I shut off the faucet and stare at the sink. I move, away from his touch. I look up, he's still staring at me in the mirror. I say quietly, but so he can hear, "No, thank you."

He blinks, nervous. He nods, glances away.

I leave the men's room. He stays inside.

I go back to my carrel. Everything's still there. I gather up my papers and books and stuff them into my bookbag. I finish grading Avila's class in the student lounge, surrounded by noise and bright lights. A shadow falls over me, and I look up, and it's Stephen, holding a giant paper cup of coffee. He shakes his head at me.

"It's eleven below outside. You need a place to crash?"

I smile. "Yes."

He shakes his head again, and he loves playing my savior. Gives me a pitying look as he cranks the heat in his Subaru, which still has that new car smell.

"Why don't you just get another job?" he says, driving to his apartment.

I stare at the night outside and watch the buildings go past.

"Because I'm not sure what I'd do."

I see him shake his head at me again.

(the end)


End file.
